


She's Afraid (And She Has The Right To Be)

by metalhawk



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Anxiety, Children in War, its very wrong
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-04
Updated: 2017-09-04
Packaged: 2018-12-23 20:17:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11997186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/metalhawk/pseuds/metalhawk
Summary: Ahsoka has some anxiety. Anakin helps her through it.





	She's Afraid (And She Has The Right To Be)

She was scared. She was shaking, ever so slightly, her shields, as hard as she tried, were letting some of her fear slip through.

Anakin had no idea what he was supposed to do. He'd dealt with children before, Padmé's nieces on Naboo, Ryoo and Pooja, but they never had been scared. They were bubbly, energetic, happy...as children should be.

They didn't have any sort of bond—hell, Anakin didn't even know how long this would last—so the most Anakin could do was sit there until he found the right words.

"You aren't going to die today."

Ahsoka looks up at him, momentarily confused. Then her face floods with realization. "Oh. You...you sensed it."

"I'm good at that," he says, offering a small smile.

She just sighs, looking down at her warped reflections in the glimmering Christophsis crystal. "I know I shouldn't be scared, I know that's wrong, but I still am," she says, beginning to fiddle with her lightsaber. "I don't know how to make it go away."

Anakin presses his lips together, again struggling to comfort her.

"It's okay to be afraid. You're just a kid, and it's stupid that you have to be out here, so you have every right to be scared." he says.

"Thanks...?" She responds, uncertain, and Anakin continues.

"I was, anyway," he admits, and shrugs. That gets Ahsoka's attention. She snaps around to stare at him.

"You were?!" She seems ridiculously surprised, and he doesn't blame her. The propaganda and stories build him up to be something he's not, a reputation that's awfully hard to withhold. "The 'Hero With No Fear' was afraid?"

"My first battle was technically the Battle of Naboo," he begins, jumping to his own defense. "I was 10. Blew up a TF Lucrehulk," he smirks. "But then again, I was just messing around."

She rolls her eyes, and thankfully, some of the fear begins to recede. "Anyway, you're saying your first battle was..." she thinks, going back into the large amount of history she'd scrambled to learn in the last few months. "Geonosis?"

"Yeah," he nods. "I was 16. Obi-Wan and I had only been patrolling the Underworld and then I got captured...and so did he...and, you remember how that went?"

She nodded. "The first battle of the Clone Wars. Of course I do."

"Well, anyway, I'm probably going to regret this later, but I'll admit that you're a lot braver than I was, kid," he says. "I had a hundred other Jedi to back me up, plus two more years of training."

"But I won't fight Count Dooku," she says, and he follows her eyes to his hands, and he just assumes she's heard rumors. "Or Asajj Ventress." Her eyes drift up to his scar.

"Hey, Snips," he smiles. "You never know. You have some potential."

She rolls her eyes again, at the nickname and at his cockiness, but doesn't say anything.

"But I want you to know that I won't let you die," he says, after the moment of silence. "You're not going to get hurt as long as you're with me. I'll protect you."

"I..." she starts, then sighs. "Thank you."

"No problem."

The sit in a comfortable silence, heavy with the words they've spoken, the heat of the nearest star beating down on them and the bright reflection shining on them.

"So..." she says, and he sees a smirk creep onto her face. "Does that mean you like me, Skyguy?"

He groans, but the truth is that he's slowly starting to care about her. She's a lot like him, and he can tell, the Force is telling him, that he'll care about her soon enough. It's becoming crystal clear that he'll risk the entire galaxy for this kid, and he can't stop that more than he can stop the twins suns from setting, as his mother would say.

He ignores the part that tells him something is going to go horribly wrong.

 

 

 


End file.
